Before leaving office last month, former UN chief Ban Ki-moon reportedly expressed concern to the Security Council that Iran’s supplying of weapons to the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah violates a longstanding arms embargo against the Islamic Republic.
In his second semi-annual report to the UN Security Council on the implementation of a resolution endorsing the 2015 Iran nuclear rapprochement deal, Ban noted a televised June speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah boasting of receiving military support from Tehran.
“[Nasrallah] stated that the budget of Hezbollah, its salaries, expenses, weapons and missiles, all came from the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Ban wrote, according to a Reuters report.
“I am very concerned by this statement, which suggests that transfers of arms and related materiel from the Islamic Republic of Iran to Hezbollah may have been undertaken contrary [to a Security Council resolution],” he said.
While most international sanctions against Iran were lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal, Tehran remains subject to longstanding UN and Western embargoes on conventional weapons. READ MORE
